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KP Unpacked
Join serial entrepreneur KP Reddy for conversations and discussions around innovation, technology trends, and AI for startup founders, innovation catalysts & investors focused on the built environment (and beyond!)
KP Unpacked
The Alchemy of Failure
Ever felt the cold sweat of fear as you stand on the precipice of failure? KP reveals how turning failures into lessons creates a pathway to success. He shares a treasure chest of strategies, including the transformative power of documenting missteps, that anyone can use to navigate through failure and emerge resilient.
KP illustrates how leaders who share their own setbacks can craft a culture of transparency and continuous improvement, especially in the high-stakes world of startups. Listen to how his interactions with startup incubators and mastermind groups underscore the necessity of resilience when navigating the choppy waters of entrepreneurship, from the perspective of both founders and venture capitalists.
Want more discussions like this? You can connect with KP Reddy at https://kpreddy.co/ and follow him on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kpreddy/!
You are listening to KP Unpacked with KP Ready, a weekly dose of insights for innovators and startups from the built environment and beyond. Want more discussions like this? You can connect with KP Ready today at kpreadyco that's K-P-R-E-D-D-Y dot co. And additionally follow him on LinkedIn at wwwlinkedincom. Slash I-N slash KP Ready. Again, that's spelled K-P-R-E-D-D-Y.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to KP Ready Unpacked. This is my opportunity to ask KP Ready every week about one of the things that you posted on LinkedIn. I say hey, kp, what were you thinking when you posted that on LinkedIn? If you're not following KP Ready, the CEO and founder of Shadow Ventures and Shadow Partners, you ought to be. That's my first question is why aren't you? You need to go over to LinkedIn type in KP and then Ready R-E-D-D-Y, over to LinkedIn type in KP and then ready R-E-D-D-Y, and take advantage of what KP sees and hears and what he thinks about as he travels around, as he works with some of the largest, most influential AEC firms in the world, and sometimes he's traveling. Sometimes he's speaking to students, which I think we'll talk about today, and many times he's talking to our clients and our collaborators. So it's really interesting to see where the inspiration for his LinkedIn post come from. So obviously I am joined today by KP. Welcome, kp.
Speaker 3:Hey Jeff.
Speaker 2:Glad that you're here today. I'm looking forward to unpacking this one. It comes from your travels last week in New York. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Jeff Eccles. I'm a senior advisor and the head of marketing here at Shadow Partners and again, this is I said this before we went live. This is really a selfish endeavor because this is my time to pick KP's brain. Really is what's going on here? So I always look forward to unpacking one of these LinkedIn posts.
Speaker 2:So, kp, you posted this about a week ago I guess, as we're recording this and it was on the heels of you being in New York speaking at NYU in Columbia last week to your classes. So I'll just read it and then we can kind of go back and unpack what needs to be unpacked here. Here's how it goes. It says in one of my classes this week I had a student come up to me and ask me how to overcome fear of failure. They had a distraught look on their face. So as someone that teaches at university, I see that all the time as well. That distraught look right. It's like how do you get beyond this fear of failure? So KP goes on to say I gave him a few pointers, but it was a tough environment to have a real conversation. In fact, here are some thoughts. Please comment if you have any tips. So here's a great call to action Go over to LinkedIn, read this post and add your comments below. Whatever you think about these tips that KP shared, drop them in the comment section there on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:So tip number one from KP we have plenty of failures on any given day. Hopefully not all big ones, but nonetheless they occur. Write them down. This was the failure. Here's how I overcame it. Here is the lesson to be learned. If you didn't overcome the failure, then what were the results and the outcomes of the failure and what did you learn from that?
Speaker 2:Number two when you have fear of failure on an upcoming project, et cetera, look back at what you wrote down. It's a great reminder that you have been here before and have been able to move on after a failure. Number three some failures are externally driven, ie you have no control over it. However, you can improve your ability to see early signals of those threats and mitigate early. Number four reflect and acknowledge your role in the failure. Sometimes a pattern emerges. This pattern may determine a skill or capability that you need to improve upon or get support around. Number five talk about your failures openly. It's tough, but the more you do, the more comfortable you get.
Speaker 2:Well, it's been a great week in New York City Met some old friends, made some new ones. Taught classes at NYU in Columbia. I love working with students. The force multiplier effect of teaching students is so impactful. I still have students from Georgia Tech out from 13 years ago that I connect with, so I think that's a great post. So I think that's a great post. I think that's an important post. There's a lot to learn from that. How do we unpack that? Where do you want to start?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you know contextually too, this was a master's class at Columbia. So you know, if you're doing your master, you're doing your MBA at Columbia. Pretty good chance. You've been pretty successful in your academic career, right, and I think some of the challenges when you have people that are academically that have done, had a great academic career and are going to these high end you know Ivy league school and been very successful they probably haven't had a lot of failures along the way. You know they probably scored perfect on their SAT I'm hypothesizing, but you know, contextually, this is not someone that has probably failed a lot and um, and I think when you don't fail a lot, you don't really have the scar tissue to be somewhat resilient, uh, and and react in a, in a, in an appropriate way when you do fail. So I thought I thought it was fascinating, just because I mean, when I talk about like distraught, I thought he was gonna to cry distraught and right there in front of the class, yeah, and I think as people see shifts in business environments, shifts in their own personal lives, they start to realize that you have to kind of challenge yourself and I think at some point too, um, you reach an age I think the age is about 32 where you start to realize that there's things that you cannot like. You can't do anymore like, you just cannot. It's no longer in the cards. You're either too far along, whatever it is, you're you know it's just not in the cards anymore. And I think you then start to learn how to process regret. You know, I wish I had taken that chance. I wish I had taken that. You know, instead of taking the safe bet with my career, I should have taken that internship in Tokyo, like whatever it is Right. And so I think as you get older, you start to realize, like, um, you go from being good to process fear and then you get good at processing regret because, like I wish I had done that, I wish, you know, you start living in that world. So I think they tend to go hand in hand in many ways, because I think if you don't try, there's a good chance you're going to regret it later and you're not going to regret whether you were successful or not, you're just going to regret that you didn't even try. So I think you know most of my audience and people I deal with every day. They're startups.
Speaker 3:I think it's really hard to be a founder. It's hard to be a founder anyway, but it's also hard to be a founder knowing that you will fail. I do think you get good at it. I do think you get good at it. I do think you get good at reacting at it. So I think some of it, like many things, is you get better at things through repetition and I think for some people, like the kid the other day he was pretty tepid, I don't know that I'd put him through any kind of psychological challenges, right, it was just like it was. He was in a bad place, clearly something you know. More likely, something else was going on. I don't think my lecture was that moving, so I don't think so.
Speaker 2:Crushing the hopes and dreams.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't think so. I think it was much more optimistic than that. I bet is something. Maybe he's struggling with one of his classes and he's going to fail it.
Speaker 1:Like you know, free features and flat free pricing, regardless of your annual construction volume. Visit wwwjetbuild and get started today.
Speaker 3:It's tough in startup world and I tell people like, man, what's your next best move? That's all you got. If you're going to stay stagnant in the failure and sit there and just you know, stuck in the mud puddle of failure, you're never going to get better at it. So it's always about like, what's your next best move. I also think I think I mentioned in the post like writing stuff down is really helpful. It's really interesting.
Speaker 3:You know I joke around that. You know people say, man, you're on LinkedIn a lot. I'm like I'm on LinkedIn as often as your kids on TikTok. Yeah, sure, I'm on all the time, but I tend to process a lot of my stuff in public. I do process a lot of my thoughts and thinking in public. I was thinking about the other day like I don't need to keep a journal, someone, when I die, someone can just go collate on my linkedin post, right, it probably tells you a lot about what was going on.
Speaker 3:But I do think writing stuff down and understanding you know that you failed, here's what happened, here's what the outcome was, here's what I did next, because sometimes the failures that you're experiencing currently just feel like unbelievable, like you just cannot overcome them, like life will never be the change it's going to be that big a deal. And then when you go back and kind of reminisce on your previous failures, you realize like, oh, this actually isn't that bad compared to when that happened. And so I think it's just it's a good exercise to write things down so you can go back and realize that. And then I think the other advice was just like talk about it. You know, talk about like to your peers, to your I mean one of the things I was. I was just on a podcast before this. I mean one of the things. I was just on a podcast before this.
Speaker 3:It's been a very busy day and we were talking about founders versus CEOs and I was like I have this position that hardly any founders are actually CEOs. Right, they don't really have the. They're learning to be a CEO. They're not actually a CEO. They're not in contention to replace Bob Iger anytime soon. That's not who these people are. They're developing the skills to be and hopefully their personal growth will stay a step ahead of their company's growth. In other words, can they grow ahead of ahead of their company and become the CEO of their own company, or are they going to get replaced, which happens a lot. It happens more often than people realize, but you'll always be a founder Like you'll always be a founder, and one of the things you can do as a founder and leading teams as a founder is sharing the failure, sharing your fears and knowing that your team has their back, has your back, they're going to help you solve for it.
Speaker 3:But I think, culturally, the more people talk about these topics to their teams, the better. I get asked. It's weird. I don't consider myself like this culture wizard. I just kind of do the things I do and people go, wow, can you come talk? You know I have CEOs. Can you come talk to my leadership team culture? And I'm like, I guess, like I don't I don't have a PhD in this stuff Like I don't feel like there's people better equipped and they're just like no, you're great at telling stories and you're great at being vulnerable and I'm trying to get my team to be better storytellers and be more vulnerable about what they do so they can be better leaders.
Speaker 3:And so it's really interesting these cycles of change, you know, and I've been pretty big advocating like, look, we're at the early innings of an AI super cycle. But it is a super cycle. It's not a hype cycle, it's not any of those other cycles, it's the real deal. People are afraid and I think the best way you get people aligned is to, as a leader, is to talk about your failures and what happened and go from there and move on.
Speaker 3:And I think the more you can talk about it. I think it's almost as much as it's cathartic for you to share your failures and speak Just like going to therapy. Half of it's not what the therapist says to you, it's just the fact that you shared it right, you said it out loud, and so I think very similarly. I think it's as much helpful to others if you share your failures as helpful as it is for yourself.
Speaker 2:You know you mentioned the incubator a few minutes ago and there are several things that come to mind related to that that align perfectly with what you were just saying. I think I'll go in backwards order here, but that idea of sharing failure, one of the things that happens every time. We have a workshop for the incubator. So we're in the cycle of this evergreen incubator right now where every couple of weeks we have every two weeks, we have a um, uh, what I call a workshop. So we have half a day and we bring in speakers. You know, we have a startup founder, we have a VC, we have a subject matter expert to speak to, whatever the topic of the day is, and then, um, the founders that are going through the incubator. They report out, right, they tell their stories, etc. But the by far the most popular segment of that when it comes to the startup world is when startup founders talk about their failures. So it's the other founders that are going through the incubator right now. They're hearing from somebody that's several steps ahead of where they are right now. Of course, they want to hear how they built it. You know those types of things, but they want to know what went wrong because they learn from that right, and so I think that's very important, that right and so, um, I think that's very important and one of the things that I do, you know, when we start the each cohort of the incubator. To me, I think it's really easy to figure out who's going to excel on this incubator, who's not going to excel in this incubator, by listening to the people that are convinced that they know, convinced that they have the answer, that they know the answer, you know that they're right, all of those things. And then find the people that are there and they're open to the exploration and they're open to the learning and they're open to the doing the work, and you know the first version, the first person, the first person is the one that's not going to excel right, they're not going to reflect.
Speaker 2:As you said before, resilience is an important thing. You touched on that earlier. The only way that we build resilience is to be able to exactly what you did, what you said in the post, is to be able to look at those failures, those mistakes, learn from those maybe, maybe document those you know in in writing or or talking about them with your therapist or however, but but being able to look back and reflect and then ask the questions okay, where did this come from? Did I see it coming? How can I, how can I identify it earlier? If I'm going on a bear hunt, how do I get over it, under it, around it, through it, and then what do I do next time? That's, that's the, that it's the incubator or otherwise, because it's very rare that this is their first rodeo. They've had a startup before and this is their third or their second or their fifth, and now they're applying what they learned along the way in those others. You know the other, the earlier part of their journey yeah, I think it's interesting.
Speaker 3:You bring up the incubator, um. On this topic, I feel like the most you know, we do a lot of things, we try a lot of things around here, um, and then some of them have impact. Some of of them don't we. We read, we read the market differently, I think you know. Whatever, I feel like this year so far, the highest impact activity that we have done has been the mastermind groups and the ability for executives to quote, unquote sit around the table with their peers and you're like you and Ian are facilitating these conversations. That are things like fear, that are, hey, you made the decision on our big.
Speaker 3:ERP implementation and we went over budget 2x and it took twice as long. And no one's saying it, but I feel like everybody blames me and it's like I feel like people are talking behind my back about how I screwed this up. And for that person to be able to share like, hey, this is what's going on at work to others that are in those similar spots where you do make decisions and nobody's making these decisions these are multi-billion dollar companies, nobody's making decisions alone but that somehow there's this inner angst that I made this decision and and, by the way, 110% of all ERP implementations are failures. There is no one. I used to be in that business. I used to have an SAP consulting business. I mean, none of them go well.
Speaker 3:It's kind of like construction with no change orders. Which projects are those? It's like no, I mean, imagine if every project manager of a construction company felt like they were a failure because there was a change order, you know, I mean or an owner or developer like, oh, there's a change order. I must be terrible. Like, no, like, that's just par for the course. And I think sometimes it takes hearing that from others that, oh man, like, let me tell you about how ours went. You think yours was bad, mine was, you know and then the person walks away going. You know what man like I'm? I'm not out here on an Island, I'm not out here alone and and I think it's I think that there's been a lot of impact around that, around the mastermind groups and really making people comfortable that, whatever you know whether it's AI or whatever else that you're having to tackle tomorrow that you're in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean, we all, I think, tend to think that our stuff is unique, right, and it's just not. There's other people that are experiencing it and, and, um, you know, I think back I've got a whole stack of notes over here from from the mastermind groups that I facilitate and it. It surprises me and it shouldn't, but what inevitably happens every time we meet is that so the format is? We go around the table, everybody talks about what they, but what inevitably happens every time we meet is that so the format is? We go around the table and everybody talks about what they, what they did the last couple of weeks, you know, between now and the previous meeting that we had, and, and you know what went well, what didn't. You know, last, last time, you said you were going to be doing this, how'd that go? Did you even get to it? You know, et cetera.
Speaker 2:And what emerges from those conversations are themes and, without fail, every week or or every meeting, somebody brings something up. Hey, I'm working on this, I'm struggling with this, um, just had to do this. And you know it's. It's a room of of um, say, eight, eight or nine people, and there are about six people in that room that have the same fear, that have the same struggle, that um, maybe had the same failure, or headed to that same failure, or worried about that same failure, and it's every single week.
Speaker 2:It's that right, and I, I write down, as I'm taking notes, I, I, I sort of write down a theme every week. You know, this is, this is what we talked about and it's you know. You think, well, there's eight or nine people in the room. How do you get to one? It gets to one because everybody is sharing about separate but similar experiences, and I really do think that helps mentally and emotionally, certainly professionally, for people to be in that environment and say, hey, I'm not the only one, and KP said this, and he's struggling with this. It's not the exact same, but here's what I'm not the only one, and KP said this, and he's he's struggling with this. It's not the exact same, but here's what I can take away from that Um, and and how I can build my own resilience based on on KP's experience.
Speaker 3:No, it's interesting because, um, I had a good friend of mine tell me she's like, you know, your, your older kids are just so well adjusted. They're such good kids One of them's getting ready to graduate and there's that whole thing. I'm like, oh thanks. And you know, her point was just that, like I think you have been so open and honest with them that, like, life rarely goes your way. But it's how you bounce back, it's how you keep moving and just keep on moving, just don't stop, keep on moving and keep trying to get better, and so I think that builds a level of resilience. But no, I think it's tough.
Speaker 3:I think there's a lot of people that are. You know the job market is getting a little soft, I'm sure, like this MBA class. You know people aren't just showing up and giving them all job offers when they graduate and things like that. I think you know the startup founders, of course. You know the venture capital. I think Q1 VC was kind of all time low, like a very low cycle of capital deployment, which is probably why we're deploying more capital. I'm a little bit if everybody's going left. I'm going right by nature, but I know it's tough times for a lot of people right now, and I think also like really I used to joke around that like at the beginning of our incubator we should all have to say the serenity prayer, this is true.
Speaker 3:It's just like because that's the life they're living. Right, that is the life they're living. It is like you know it's funny because I struggle to recite it, I can't memorize it. You know it's funny because I struggle to recite it, I can't memorize it. And my wife always jokes around like I've known you for 10 years and you cannot memorize. You memorize a lot of things, you can't memorize this. And I'm like why do you think that is? She's like. I don't think you agree with it.
Speaker 2:I think you think you can change anything. But you know that's really funny because you know we put it that in the context and if you're not familiar with the serenity prayer, it's, it's something that's used in in, uh, I think, in all of the, the anonymous groups, so alcoholics, anonymous, etc. And uh, when you said that, I thought, well, yeah, I mean, most of these, most of these founders that come into the incubator are probably, you know, startup addicts. They've been here. They need to stand up. At the very beginning. My name is Jeff and I'm a startup founder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, enter the serenity prayer there. But, uh, but. But you know, going back to the previous statement, you're exactly right, we. We may have brought this up last week, I don't remember, but you know the mike tyson quote, the famous mike tyson quote everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
Speaker 2:That, I mean, that's. That's sort of funny in a way, uh, especially coming from the character but um, but I think it is is completely applicable here too. It's you know, you're, you're at Columbia, uh, trying to complete your MBA. You're a startup founder and an incubator. You're wherever it's like you. You have this idea, you have these goals, you have this plan that, at the end of the day, may be completely meaningless because somebody life, the economy, whatever is going to punch you in the mouth. So you know, those are good life lessons.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%. And look, I feel like sometimes, you know, especially with students coming to me with that, even founders, um, you know, I, I I try to be as helpful as I can but I feel woefully ill-equipped um to really like to really help. You know, it's always like hey, maybe you should talk to somebody. You know, I always feel that way. Yeah, you know, I got it. I got a slack message from a founder, uh, the other morning and I showed it to my wife and she was just like, hey, like, do you need to like? Are they okay? Like you need to like, call them like, or you know this because you know she doesn't know the person, but the way she read the message she was like is this person okay?
Speaker 3:and I'm like no like I like I'll talk to them later, but I think this is just, you know, looking at the time of day it came through and knowing what's going on with them, I think this is just event. I don't, I don't think there's, there's Like there's nothing. I don't, I don't, you know, but but it is like you have these conversations. Sometimes you're like wow, okay, like you're in a tough spot and I will say like, as a VC, it's a weird dynamic. You know, money does not have feelings. Money is not like I don't know. Money's a weird thing.
Speaker 3:When you're in venture, in general, right, whether it's your venture capital or you're wealthy, money is like numbers, right, it's just, it's not as it's not. You change your point of view around money and as a VC, I just get so focused. You know, when a founder says it's not going well and I think they've done all the things they can, right, maybe it was some existential threat, but who knows what, I'm always like well, what do you want to do next? And they always get shocked at me when I say that I'm like dude, my relationship's with you, I don't have a relationship with money, like that is not a thing. I have a relationship with you and you have gone through this process for X number of years in a very authentic way and you worked your butt off and you did all the things. That doesn't mean that if you do all the things, that doesn't mean if you do all the things, it doesn't mean the outcome is going to be positive. But that doesn't mean I don't want to have a continued relationship. Let's go start something else. Let's go start something else. What do you want to do next? And it's interesting how founders get so surprised by that attitude. And because I think it's not unique to me. I have a lot of VC friends and I think it's not unique to me. I have a lot of VC friends and I think we all have the same attitude that you know.
Speaker 3:If you look at like who's a steward over at Slack, when he first started Slack it had nothing. It looked nothing like Slack. It was a gaming company. And I remember sitting next to Stuart at South by Southwest one year, which everybody gathers at the Four Seasons Hotel because that's where people be seen, and he's sitting there hammering code out and I'm sitting at a table with him and the CMO for Apple at L'Oreal all these big names, and Stuart's doing this right Just on the keyboard, but most of the people that backed him, like his previous endeavors, they he failed, right, he was a failure, um, and I think it's just like well, you know, it doesn't mean you're not talented, you know. Um, I'm sorry, you know, like could join the Atlanta Falcons. We're still not going to this year. I don't care how good he is.
Speaker 2:Well, you say the same thing about a lot of teams, I guess.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my point is that I think people have to realize like, look, this is, these are projects. I've been hating to call them companies on anything, Just like it's like they're not CEOs, they're founders and those are projects. And if a project doesn't go well, you do do the next project.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean none of these things are terminal, right, I mean it's, it's I. I have grown to dislike the term the journey but it's part of of the journey.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, so and this. So we've got two old guys sitting here talking about this, right, and? And all of this stems from a conversation with a student who my guess is was maybe in their mid-20s or something like that. But if somehow you landed here towards the end of this conversation, what we're doing right now is unpacking one of KP's posts on LinkedIn. So, again, if you don't follow KP Ready on LinkedIn, you need to go over there and look up KP Ready R-E-D-D-Y and follow him, because you get a lot of really insightful posts, some of them very inspiring, some of them instructional, some of them very reflective, etc. And this post is one that KP put up while he was in New York last week. So let me read the post one more time and then we can wrap this up. It says in one of my classes this week, I had a student come up to me and ask me how to overcome fear of failure. They had a distraught look on their face. I gave them a few pointers, but it was a tough environment to have a real conversation.
Speaker 2:In reflection, here's some thoughts. Number one we have plenty of failures on any given day. Hopefully not all big ones, but nonetheless they occur. Write them down. This was the failure, here's how I overcame it and here's the lesson to be learned. If you didn't overcome the failure, then what were the results and the outcomes of the failure and what did you learn? Number two when you have fear of failure on an upcoming project, look back at what you wrote down. It's a great reminder that you've been here before and you've been able to move on after a failure, that you've been here before and you've been able to move on after a failure.
Speaker 2:Number three some failures are externally driven, ie you have no control over it. However, you can improve your ability to see early signals of these threats and mitigate them early. Number four reflect and acknowledge your role in the failure. Sometimes a pattern emerges. This pattern may determine a skill or capability that you need to improve upon or maybe get support around. And number five talk about your failures openly. It's tough, but the more you do, the more comfortable you get.
Speaker 2:So, kp, thanks for sharing this post, first of all and you know, helping letting all of us sort of learn a little bit from this interaction that you had with the student. And again, for those of you out there, make sure you're following KP. This is a great opportunity for me to ask KP you know what's the inspiration, what drives this particular story? And, uh, I'm glad you're able to join in with us, whether you're watching this live as we record it or some recorded version, either on the shadow network podcast or here inside the catalyst network, uh, which is our community on circle. So, uh, kp, thanks again for sharing this, thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 1:And I look forward to doing this again next week. All right, we'll see you, jeff. Thanks, want more discussions like this? You can connect with KP Ready today at kpreadyco that's K-P-R-E-D-D-Yco, and additionally follow him on LinkedIn at wwwlinkedincom. Slash I N slash K P ready Until next time.